page_title: East Turkestan
section_title: Early 20th century
hierarchical_section_title: East Turkestan / History of the term / Early 20th century
caption_attribution_description: English: A banknote issued by the government of the Second (2nd) East Turkestan Republic.
context_page_description: East Turkestan, also East Turkistan, also known as Uyghuristan varies in meaning by context and usage. The term was coined in the 19th century by Russian Turkologists including Nikita Bichurin to replace another Western term, Chinese Turkestan, which referred to the Tarim Basin in the southwestern part of Xinjiang during the Qing Dynasty. The medieval Persian toponym "Turkestan" and its derivatives were not, however, used by the local population. The Uyghur name for the Tarim Basin is Altishahr, which means "Six Cities" in Uyghur. Besides, China had since the Han Dynasty had its own name for an overlapping area: the "Western Regions." The parts of this area controlled by China were termed "Xinjiang" starting in the 18th century.
  From the 20th century on, Uyghur separatists and their supporters used East Turkestan as an appellation for the whole of Xinjiang or for a future independent state in present-day Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. They reject the name of Xinjiang because of the Chinese perspective reflected in the name and prefer East Turkestan to emphasize connection to other, westerly, Turkic groups.
context_section_description: In 1912, the Xinhai Revolution overthrew the Qing Dynasty and created a Republic of China. As Yuan Dahua, the last Qing governor, fled from Xinjiang, one of his subordinates, Yang Zengxin (杨增新), took control of the province and acceded in name to the Republic of China in March of the same year. In 1921, the Soviet Union officially defined the Uyghurs as the sedentary Turkic peoples from Chinese Turkestan as part of their nation building policy in Central Asia. Multiple insurgencies arose against Yang's successor Jin Shuren (金树仁) in the early 1930s throughout Xinjiang, usually led by Hui people. "East Turkestan" became a rallying cry for people who spoke Turki and believed in Islam to rebel against Chinese authorities. In the Kashgar region on November 12, 1933, Uyghur separatists declared the short-lived and self-proclaimed East Turkestan Republic (ETR), using the term "East Turkestan" to emphasize the state's break from China and new anti-China orientation.
  The First ETR gave political meaning to the erstwhile geographical term of East Turkestan. However, the Chinese warlord Sheng Shicai (盛世才) quickly defeated the ETR and ruled Xinjiang for the decade after 1934 with close support from the Soviet Union. Eventually, though, the Soviet Union exploited the change in power from Sheng to Kuomintang officials to create the puppet Second East Turkestan Republic (1944–1949) in present-day Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture to exploit its minerals, later justifying it as a national liberation movement against the "reactionary" Kuomintang regime. Amid the anti-Han programs and policies and exclusion of "pagans", or non-Muslims, from the separatist government, Kuomintang leaders based in Dihua (Ürümqi) appealed to the long Chinese history in the region to justify its sovereignty over Xinjiang. In response, Soviet historians produced revisionist histories to help the ETR justify its own claims to sovereignty, with statements such as that the Uyghurs were the "most ancient Turkic people" that had contributed to world civilization. Traditionally, scholars had thought of Xinjiang as a "cultural backwater" compared to the other Central Asian states during the Islamic Golden Age. Local British and American consuls, also intrigued by the separatist government, published their own histories of the region. The Soviet Uyghur histories produced during its support of the ETR remain the basis of Uyghur nationalist publications today.
caption: $1000 East Turkistan Dollar Note, 1945
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